Ways tech­nol­ogy is chang­ing how we live

ONe as­pect of tech­nol­ogy that has made a huge im­pact on the world is the In­ter­net. Quite a num­ber of us have al­ready be­come so used to the In­ter­net that we al­most take it for granted, de­spite the fact that more than 50 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion is yet to get on­line.

Be that as it may, for a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple, it is nearly im­pos­si­ble to go a sin­gle day without the In­ter­net. It has sim­ply rev­o­lu­tionised how we live, com­mu­ni­cate and trans­act on a daily ba­sis. Below are a few ways tech­nol­ogy is chang­ing how we live: per cent by Nige­ri­ans with the goal of solv­ing ex­am­i­na­tion mal­prac­tice, which is dam­ag­ing our ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. I will fo­cus on this topic in the fu­ture be­cause tech­nol­ogy can help strengthen this al­limpor­tant sec­tor. The sooner pol­i­cy­mak­ers un­der­stand this, the bet­ter for the fu­ture of our na­tion.

I still re­call that the Joint Ad­mis­sions and Ma­tric­u­la­tions Board process in my days as a sec­ondary school leaver was not palat­able. I had to travel to and from JAMB of­fices and des­ig­nated cen­tres, ei­ther to buy or sub­mit forms ,or even check the re­sults in some cases. To­day, the process has changed tremen­dously. Note that I used the word ‘changed’ in­stead of ‘im­proved’ be­cause as the process is to­day, it is still a rather cum­ber­some one.

As a mat­ter of fact, a num­ber of ex­perts have ar­gued that JAMB as of to­day is mak­ing a mock­ery of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy. Whether this as­ser­tion is true or not, my opin­ion is that JAMB is not lev­er­ag­ing tech­nol­ogy. how­ever, a lot has changed.

Busi­nesses to­day are de­ploy­ing web tech­nolo­gies to pro­mote their busi­nesses, prod­ucts, ser­vices and brands (in­clud­ing per­sonal brands) across the world. In­ter­net mar­ket­ing has be­come very pop­u­lar; en­trepreneurs are pro­mot­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices glob­ally. The stock ex­change is com­pletely de­pen­dent on In­ter­net tech­nol­ogy through which in­vestors con­stantly mon­i­tor prices and much more.

I love re­search and I con­duct ba­sic to com­plex re­search all the time. I be­lieve this is the case for mil­lions of other peo­ple across the world who de­pend on the In­ter­net to learn about a lot of things or seek ba­sic an­swers to a press­ing chal­lenge.

even sur­vey forms that are very im­por­tant for the academia and mar­ket re­search pro­cesses have also been digi­tised, mak­ing it eas­ier to gather in­sights from var­i­ous tar­get groups. the most with his wife us­ing

even when she is next to him. Now, I don’t know how healthy that could be for the re­la­tion­ship on the long run, but he claims they are both cool with it.

A lit­tle over 20 years ago, it was con­sid­ered a lux­ury to have a phone line con­nected to your home, and only a few had that priv­i­lege. To­day, Nige­ria is one of the coun­tries with the high­est mo­bile adop­tion rate.

I rarely visit a bank­ing hall. I bet there are a num­ber of peo­ple who have not been to one to carry out trans­ac­tions, ex­cept in cases where the en­tire chan­nels go down. To­day, bank­ing ser­vices are be­ing car­ried out seam­lessly not just on­line, but also on so­cial me­dia, mo­bile apps as well as IM plat­forms. This fur­ther gives cre­dence to the fact that the fu­ture of bank­ing is in that de­vice you are hold­ing and not some fancy look­ing build­ing.

Fi­nan­cial Tech­nol­ogy firms are also work­ing hard to own their space and deep­en­ing fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in ways the banks may never have done. There is also the be­lief that blockchain would fur­ther dis­rupt the in­dus­try. could ac­count for 10 per cent of re­tail sales in Africa’s largest economies, “which will trans­late into some $75bn in an­nual rev­enue.”

In Nige­ria, there has been a com­pet­i­tive play by two gi­ants (Konga and Ju­mia) to win the heart of cus­tomers through mouth-wa­ter­ing dis­counts. e-com­merce adop­tion may not have hap­pened as fast as one had ex­pected, but the re­al­ity is that on­line shop­ping is fast be­com­ing pop­u­lar.

If you live in a traf­fic prone city such as La­gos, then you will have no choice but to rely on some map­ping ser­vices to en­sure that you are not held up in the traf­fic jam. In most cases, the first thing I do be­fore I step out is to check the traf­fic con­di­tions on the way and if I find out that it is heavy, I re-eval­u­ate the jour­ney once again. I have also tried to use a map­ping ser­vice in very re­mote ar­eas of the coun­try and it works.

I could go on and on shar­ing many ways tech­nol­ogy has trans­formed how we live. Now, while I ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that a lot is hap­pen­ing, my great­est joy will be to see Nige­ria and Nige­ri­ans take ad­van­tage of tech­nol­ogy, not just as con­sumers but also de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions and cre­at­ing mas­sive value.